NSAI night...

Tonight was the first NSAI meeting of the season. I've been so busy with getting the house ready for market that I really haven't had much time for writing lately. I did some stuff last week, but really nothing worth presenting. (half songs, nothing finished...) But I was still really excited about going and reminding myself why I am selling the house and doing all this work.

The meeting was packed, which was great. Tonight's lesson was on co-writing. Til now, all my co-writing has been with Gerald. But once we hit Nashville, we'd like to start writing with lots of different people, so tonight's lesson was very well timed for us. Once we heard the topic, we were broken up into partners to do a co-writing exercise. Gerald and I took the chance to work with some other people. We were all given the title "The House on the Hill". We then had to go through the steps of brainstorming, choosing the singer's point of view, and choosing to whom we are singing. After 15 minutes, we all stopped to share our ideas. And, of course, it was amazing how many song ideas could come from the one idea.

After this was critique time. I didn't have anything brand new, but I did have something that really hasn't been heard by anyone. Last year, I worked on a Christmas lyric and tune. I was pretty happy with it, but as I started to pass it around, I started to receive negative feedback on the melody. It was a real lesson on presenting a song too early. I sort of hid it in shame for many months. But this year, at Stamps-Baxter, Daryl asked me to bring him an uptempo Christmas song. I pulled out the lyric and chorded a little tune that had been bouncing around in my head. His feedback was very positive. But since I only had the one opinion, I thought I'd bring it in tonight.

Well, at the risk of bragging, I have to say it was a hit! People clapped along on the last chorus, and then gave it rousing applause. There was some critiquing of one line, which was great because that line didn't sit well with me and now I have some ideas for it. But overall, it was all very very positive. One person wants to me send it to a performer who's recording a Christmas CD, and another wants to bring it to his church. Whoo-hoo! All very exciting!!!

*sigh* Back to house stuff tomorrow. Working for the dream...